Dear all, the detailed programme of Palast der Republik (8.3.-10.3) is now online. I have been dreaming of seeing a programme like this, that brings together international artists, activist, scholars with protagonists from 1989/90 into discussions, performances, art works, dedicated to the content and relevance of that revolution for, well… the last 30 years…

My website is currently under (re-)construction and missing its multilingual functionality. For information on my projects in English please contact me at mail [at] elskerosenfeld [dot] net. For texts in English see also: www.dissidencies.net.

As some of you know, I have been spending a lot of time over the past months at the Archive of the GDR Opposition in Berlin-Lichtenberg, where together with Suza Husse, a group of fantastic artists and authors, and the wonderfully supportive team of the Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft, and with much help from District Berlin, we collectively cooked up our project

“wild recuperations. material from below. Artistic Research at the Archive of the GDR opposition.”

Our baby is now ready to see the light of day! We would love to see you at our opening on Nov 4th or on one of the many other occasions until December 16th.

The exhibition “Interruptions: Scripts, Rehearsals, Gestures” combines new iterations of two respective bodies of research of Achim Lengerer and Elske Rosenfeld. Both practices look at leftist/dissident histories of the pre-1990 East / West Germany, working with and from historical documents in which institutions, groups, and individuals come to be articulated within and beyond language. Physical gestures are conceived in both practices as instances of rupture and openness within historical narratives – in other words, moments where specific configurations of possibility and failure coincide.

For the exhibition, each has produced a new work in a shared work process that involved students of the Leipzig Art Academy as well as protagonists from both historical instances: participants of the Central Round Table of the GDR in 1989 and members of a mid-1980s Jena based Peter Weiss reading group. In this process, Achim has developed a collective performative rehearsal based on text material and transcriptions from his research into the reception of Peter Weiss’s play “Trotsky in Exile” and from his “Aesthetics of Resistance”. Elske has worked out a new format of her project “A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures”: a collective exercise in notating and reembodying the physical movements in which the urgency of a revolutionary decision making process manifests as physical excess.

With photographs by Andreas Rost, text collages by Elske Rosenfeld, notes by Christian Borchert on the year 1990, and texts by Jan Wenzel. Layout: Wolfgang Schwärzler. Architecture: Diana Felber.

f/stop In Situ looks back at the year 1990. In comparing the years 1989 and 1990 it is remarkable that they have been recorded so differently in the collective memory. Virtually everyone in Germany can recall the events of the fall of 1989, while the year 1990—the lines of development of which were continually being disrupted—often remains unintelligible and incommunicable. Like children who can remember nothing before their third birthday, for many East Germans 1990 seems to be buried. Yet just as the first years of life shape a person’s emotional character, the experiences of 1990—all the hopes, fears, promises of happiness and disappointments – have left their mark on people’s deepest feelings and attitudes.

Very happy to announce that Suza Husse and I will begin work on our year-long collaboration with the Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft/Archiv der DDR-Opposition and a group of wonderful artists and writers to work together towards an exhibition, publication, and events programme hosted by District Berlin.

DISSIDENCIES is space for short-form textual observations, for making connections and shared thinking around the history of, before, and after 1989.

I have put a few recent texts and postings up there and will be using this as a space for regular writings for beyond the much loved bubble. At least that is the hope, so do spread the word. This is a work in progress, so any feedback, criticism, or suggestions are welcome. Texts in English are here: http://dissidencies.net/category/english/

Today at 15:10 on SAVVY FUNK: Das Radio der Documenta 14 on Deutschlandfunk Achim Lengerer and I talk about my research into the footage from the East German Central Round Table. Looking forward to this!

My first real encounter with academic publishing, this has been a mixed, but definitely instructive experience. I am happy-ish with the outcome and would love to hear any thoughts any of you might have if you have time to skim through it.

Just back from the Divnogorie Museum Reserve, in Voronesh Oblast in Russia, where Åsa Sonjasdotter and I presented our research into the photographic archive of the former Institute for Plant Breeding in Groß Lüsewitz and the potato Adretta in the context of Mikhail Lylov’s carefully and lovingly put together mini-festival and book launch “Новые вопросы краеведения”. The book “Parallel Diagonals: artistic inquiry into a landscape” contains an image/text contribution by Åsa and myself, including images from the archive, interviews with the breeders of Adretta and a commentary on the Soviet/Russian afterlife of the potato by Misha Lylov. Available on request.

I was happy to present my performance at the Artes Liberales Festival in Minsk recently. Great programme in an interesting place – wonderful co-presenters and a great, engaged audience. Thanks to all who made this possible!

I presented my performance “She turns her head, …” at THE CAPTURE OF SPEECH, DIALOGUES WITH THE MILITANT FILM ARCHIVE, at Tabakalera, San Sebastian/Donostia last week: An extremely exciting and generous context, bringing together various researchers and artists that are beginning to organise and theorise, and get into conversation about a potential future archive/s of the dispersed and often little known militant films made under and against the Franco regime. It was an amazing priviledge to be able to bear witness and contribute in a very small way to this timely and important effort.

Showing my video “A bit of a Complex Situation” in what is probably the most perfect company of ideas, people, questions, works: “Ene Mene Muh…. Welche Stadt willst du?” at ngbk, Berlin. Do come and join!

Talk with Margareta Kern and Karen Mirza, at On Fictions and Gestures in the Contemporary: Art and Moving Image (organised by Mihaela Brebenel/ Radical Media Forum, Goldsmiths College London):

(Photo: Mihaela Brebenel)

Talk with Judith Braband and Sebastian Pflugbeil, former participants of the Central Round Table of the GDR, on December 7th 2015 (the 25th anniversary of its first meeting) in the exhibition at Galerie im Turm:

Been meaning to add links to these two interviews journalist Unn Gustafsson did with me – one in 2009 (20th anniversary of “the Peaceful Revolution”) and the second one last November (25th anniversary of the “Fall of the Wall”). (The shift in terminology, that is, in how the – same – event is referred to, is in itself telling, and is one of the aspects that we discuss… )

You are cordially invited to the second part of my exhibition project A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures, opening this Thursday at Galerie im Turm in Berlin-Friedrichshain.

The project combines different modes of interaction with three historical documents. Gestures and movements taken from these are developed into abstracted interventions that address the body as the site and archive of a political event. At the centre of this second part of the project is the video installation“Ein bisschen eine komplexe Situation/A mass is gathering outside”, a reworking of material from the Central Round Table of the GDR from 1989.

On Sun, 7th Dec, the 25th anniversary of the first meeting of the Central Round Table, a talk with invited guests will focus on those radical political demands and practices of the revolution of 1989 that have been over-written, side-lined and obscured by current commemorations of these events as merely the “Fall of the Wall.”

You are cordially invited to the two-part exhibition project A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures, opening this Wednesday, 3 September, atScriptingsand later on this year atGalerie im Turm(27 November).

The two parts of the exhibition foreground different formats and aspects of reworking the material. Scriptings’ program is official partner of this year’ s edition of Berlin Art Week.

My text Sie hebt die Hand, sie wendet den Kopf. Eine Untersuchung zu Körper und Revolution has just been published in Springerin (http://www.springerin.at/de/), in the Issue Chronic Times, which was co-edited by Springerin and PhD-in-Practice. You can read it (in German only) HERE.